he is
specially appointed to guard. When our curiosity was otherwise
satisfied,--when we had even ascended to the rude confessional, which
was a mere excavation in the soft stone of the wall,--when we had put
our hands in the hollow, not unlike a swallow's nest in a mud-bank, once
the receptacle for holy water,--when we had descended the stony pathway,
for it was so worn as scarcely to merit the name of staircase,--when,
standing once more on the chapel-pavement, with minds excited by the
thought of those monkish days when priestcraft ruled the land,--our eyes
naturally fell on the old oak chest. What further revelation might not
this disclose! What sacred relics, what curious church-plate, what
vellum manuscript, might not be hidden beneath this heavy lid! Would she
rise and let us see?

No,--she maintained her seat and her reserve with as much rigidity as on
the former occasion. Unconvinced by this experience, our imaginations
still ran riot. They shadowed forth every possible beauty and horror
which such a giant chest might contain. The story even of "The Bride of
the Mistletoe-Bough" might be verified, if we could but get a peep. At
last we prevailed. The child was persuaded to dismount, we lifted the
cover, and the chest was empty,--literally empty.

Once more the plain fact of the present had swept away the cobwebs of
the past, the real had banished the ideal. While the child of to-day
sought only a comfortable rest from weariness, we had been seeking
myths. She looked on as indignant as a dethroned queen. We turned away a
little mortified, and a good deal disappointed.

But the Fenella of the castle was not so very tired, after all. True,
she was tired of the old manor-house, tired of us, tired of her own dull
routine of duty; but there was a well-spring of freshness in her yet.
She moved languidly, to be sure, as she now led the way to the tower,
the only portion of the castle yet unvisited. Following her, we
ascended, first, to a bare upper room, a sort of anteroom, from which
the ascent to the tower commenced. It presented a solid inclosure of
stone, except on the western side, where it was dimly lighted through
one or two slits in the masonry. Turning my eyes in this direction, I
saw our little guide leaning against the stone framework of one of these
chinks in the wall. The beams of western sunlight came slanting in at
precisely the angle of her figure as she leaned back in infantile
repose; her white ri